Backslash

Something awesome — The Internet is brimming with humor and satire sites — but the thing is, not many of them are all that funny. Some of them are downright torturously bad, especially the ones that rely predominantly on submissions from John Q. Public. Listen, John, just because your mom or your co-worker laughed at your alternate lyrics for a Britney Spears song doesn’t mean they’re actually funny.

Fortunately, there’s a beacon of sharp wit out there in the sea of lame poop jokes: somethingawful.com. The site offers a mix of written satire and Photoshop gags, submitted by people who are, for the most part, actually funny. The site is perhaps best known for its Photoshop Phridays, where participants are given a subject, theme or base photo, and encouraged to let their dirty, creative minds run amok. Some are just really good examples of outstanding Photoshop skills, while others are crudely rendered but hilarious enough to induce some serious snarfage. A recent challenge to create your own breakfast cereal elicited “ShiavOs — part of a complete persistent vegetative breakfast!” and “Wuties — breakfast of gangstas” (the W is the Wu-Tang symbol). The humor is frequently crude and often in horribly poor taste — part of what makes it so dang fun!

Most of the site — including Photoshop Phridays — is free to peruse, but in order to read or post in the forums, you have to pay a one-time fee of $9.95, to help pay for the cost of running the site.

Got an interesting, bizarre or informative Web site you'd like to see featured here? Send it to backslash@metrotimes.com.